


Aftermath

by zach_stone



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst, Brief Minor Character Death, Canon Compliant, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-06 00:59:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6731371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zach_stone/pseuds/zach_stone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened after Joel found Ellie at the resort? A missing scene from Winter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> hi hello this is my first time writing tlou fic so i'm sorry if this is something that's been done 1 million times before. i've been replaying the game recently and i just had a mighty need to write something short and get my feels out there. this is pretty self-indulgent tbh but i hope you enjoy!

The wind whistled harshly through the busted windows of the buildings, a thick curtain of snow blocking the landscape all but a foot or two in front of him, and Joel walked. One arm raised to shield his eyes, the other hugging Ellie to his side. She leaned against him, a heavy weight, and her silence scared him. He narrowed his eyes against the blizzard, anxious to leave this hellish place far behind them.

A rustle from somewhere to his left, and in an instant Joel drew his pistol and fired off three shots into a man’s skull, dropping him lifeless to the earth. Ellie shuddered.

“Are there more of them?” she asked, her voice rough and raw. 

“No,” he said, tucking his weapon back into the holster and turning to her. “We got ‘em all.” 

Ellie nodded, glancing around before closing her eyes tightly and huddling even closer to him. “There were so many,” she said.

“I know,” he said. A whole community, dead. A real fucked-up community, but a community nonetheless. It was nothing Joel hadn’t done before, and nothing he wouldn’t do again; but for Ellie this kind of thing was still so new, fresh and raw and terrifying. She’d fought tooth and nail to escape this place, and the way she’d attacked that man, machete to the face again and again — Joel had seen something change in her eyes, that flash of desperation that he felt too often himself. She should not know that feeling. He wanted nothing more than to preserve the bright-eyed little girl who read him bad jokes and snarked him when he got too serious. He worried that he’d already lost her.

“Let’s get you outta this cold,” he said, leading her towards one of the now abandoned buildings. She balked, heels digging into the snow.

“Not here,” she said. He frowned. His abdomen throbbed, and he felt a little dizzy; he had overexerted himself, and they both needed a place to bunker down for the night.

“Ellie, it’s freezing, we need to get shelter.”

“No,” she said stubbornly. “I can’t — I can’t stay here. Please, Joel.” 

He sighed, gritting his teeth against the pain in his side. “Fine. Let’s go.” 

They walked in the snow for an achingly long time, until Joel was stumbling and Ellie pointed to a little bathroom shack and said, “In there.”

Joel slumped against the floor, the cold still seeping in on all sides, and grunted slightly. “This ain’t exactly what I had in mind when I said we needed to get out of the cold.”

He was hoping she’d taunt him in return, fall back into the banter he’d grown so used to, but she didn’t. She sat beside him, hugging her knees to her chest, blood-spattered hoodie wrapped around her. He reached over and tugged her hood up. 

“Ellie….” He didn’t know where to begin. He didn’t know how to help her. Honestly, he didn’t even fully know what happened, though he’d seen enough to get some notion. She stared resolutely at her feet.

“You’ve got a blanket in your pack, don’t you?” she asked. He opened his bag and pulled out the worn army blanket. She reached for it, and he draped it over her like a cape. “Thank you,” she said softly.

“Do you wanna talk about what happened?” he asked. She shook her head. He waited, in case she changed her mind, then said, “Well, it’s alright. You’re safe now.”

She finally looked up at him, tears in her eyes, and he hated it, hated it so much. “Am I?”

Something burned in his chest, hot and angry; not at Ellie, but at the world. “Now you listen to me. Nothing’s gonna happen to you, you hear? I ain’t lettin’ anyone or anything hurt you.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“I think I just did,” he said firmly. She sniffled, wiping at her nose. He touched her arm. “Hey. What’s that your comics say? Keep on surviving?”

She glanced sideways at him, mouth twisting into something that was almost a smile. “Endure and survive,” she said. He nodded.

“That’s it. Endure and survive. And we do that, don’t we? Done a pretty damn good job of it so far.”

“S’pose so,” she allowed. She hesitated, and something in her face changed. The dull fear in her eyes was replaced with a gaze so intense it startled him. “I am never letting someone do that to me again. No one is allowed to — to touch me like that, to hurt me like that. He said… he said he was gonna chop me up into pieces.” She shuddered. “Never again.”

“Damn right,” he said. 

Ellie shifted, tugging the blanket off her shoulders and draping it over her legs. Then she held up the corner. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Just a bit,” Joel said. He scooted closer, so his legs were covered as well. “Now how’s about you get some sleep, huh?”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to fall asleep,” she said. “I can’t even close my eyes without seeing his face.”

Joel had the sudden urge to go back to that burning building and hack the man’s corpse into bits. Ellie was watching him, and there was a question in her eyes. “What?” he asked.

“It’s just… you said before, you used to be a hunter. You used to kill people, innocent people.” He wanted to say there were no innocent people, not in this world, but he let her continue. “I just need to know. Did you ever — what they did?”

“Jesus, Ellie, no,” he said, appalled. “I’ve done a lot I’m not proud of, but I’d never stoop to that. Stringin’ people up like pigs for slaughter,  _ eating  _ them… doesn’t make you much different from the infected. I’d never.”

“You promise?”

“Ellie.”

“Okay.” She slouched down the wall a bit more. “I believe you.” 

 

But something changed after that night. He noticed it in the way she pulled away from him, stuck in her own head all the time. Staring into space, not listening to him when he spoke, holding herself like she was afraid she’d shatter. The worst part was how familiar it all felt. Joel remembered, years ago, how Tommy had started to pull away. How he’d gone all surly and silent, until Joel could feel the silent resentment in Tommy’s eyes, burning like two holes in the back of Joel’s skull. Joel remembered the anger, when Tommy had shouted at him, shoved him, left him for good. How it had hurt, but Joel’s heart had hardened to stone, so he had just let his little brother walk away. 

Joel knew, as he watched Ellie out of the corner of his eye, that what had happened to her had changed her irrevocably. It had changed them both — Ellie had fractured the protective walls he’d put up, the thought of losing her was inconceivable. And Joel knew then, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that someday soon Ellie was going to leave him. 


End file.
